Foreign cultural norms are better accepted in the second language

Abstract

Cultural diversity goes hand-in-hand with language variation. It is unknown however, whether using a second language influences one's disposition toward cultural concepts. Here, we show that bilinguals process violations of cultural norms differently depending on whether concepts are introduced in the native (L1) or the second (L2) language. Participants read sentences that were acceptable or not, independent of culture, or acceptable in one culture but not in the other. Culture-independent generic knowledge was integrated similarly across languages, as indexed by N400 modulations of event-related brain potentials, whereas statements conforming to British culture were better accepted by Chinese–English bilinguals when presented in L2 English than L1 Chinese. To our knowledge, these findings offer the first evidence for an effect of language of operation on cultural judgments in bilinguals. Functioning in a second language thus disposes one to be more tolerant toward foreign cultural values, which has important implications in a culturally diverse world.